In the 1990s, Patrick Roscoe was known as the great iconoclast of Canadian fiction. As author of such acclaimed short-story collections as Birthmarks and Beneath the Western Slopes and the novels God's Peculiar Care and The Lost Oasis, his work revealed a deeply personal artfulness and a rare gift for language and character.

After dropping out of sight for twelve years, Patrick reclaims his rightful place in the literary limelight with this powerful suite of short fiction set in Spain, Africa, California, and British Columbia.

Haunted by wild dogs, tattoo artists, and murdered children, Patrick Roscoe's characters―lonely, damaged, nomadic―are outsiders in an often brutal and punishing landscape whose disturbing darkness is illuminated by flashes of beauty. In Roscoe's beguiling laboratory, science meets emotion in experiments that attempt to decipher the forces of love, loss, and longing.